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Leading items and editorialsAnother year ends, so it must be time for an LWN retrospective and look forward. Interested parties may want to review the 1998 year-end LWN for a similar summary of where we were a year ago. Things have changed a lot. So what are the themes of 1999? Here's a quick look:
What awaits Linux in 2000? We don't know much more than anybody else, but that hasn't kept us from sounding off over the last couple years. Here's a few ideas:
Beyond all that, look for the usual tremendous growth in Linux deployments, more endorsements from the commercial world, continued pointless licensing flamewars, and no end of things that nobody expects. Another issue for 2000 is protection of algorithms. Software patents, clearly, are an important aspect of this problem. The software patent issue may well come to a head in the coming year, as silly patents bite more and more people. The level of discontent will certainly rise; whether it's enough to bring about any kind of worthwhile change remains to be seen. Software patents are bad enough, but free software also is vulnerable to attacks on reverse engineering. The current attack by the "DVD Copy Control Association" against 72 defendents demonstrates clearly the extent of the problem. The DVD folks put together a poor, closed-source encryption system that was easily broken; now they want to use intellectual property laws to put the genie back into the bottle. They will fail, but the amount of grief that they can cause in the meantime is large. Defendants are being named in this suit for the crime of linking to places where DVD information could be found. Deja.com has been named for carrying a netnews posting with links. The attack on reverse engineering is scary. If it succeeds, expect to see a lot more like it. And once it is illegal to look inside a box to see how it works, it will be always harder to create free software equivalents, to deal with problems, or even to look for "NSA keys." So much for freedom. The attack on linking is perhaps even worse. It is reminiscent of the "Communications Decency Act" of the mid-90's, which attempted to criminalize the provision of legal information. If linking is a crime, then the web is in trouble, and freedom along with it. It is encouraging that (just before LWN went to "press") the initial motion for a restraining order (to prevent posting or linking to the DeCSS code) was denied by the court, but this fight has just begun. Let us hope that 2000 goes down as the year when these sorts of attacks were beaten back. (See also: Chris DiBona's DVD page, and articles in Wired News and News.com). Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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December 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and editorialsBuffer overflow protection from kernel patches. Patches for the Linux kernel exist, like Solar Designer's non-executable stack patch, which disallow the execution code on the stack, making a number of buffer overflow attacks harder - and defeating completely a number of current exploits used by "script kiddies" worldwide. However, such patches have not been pulled into the main Linux kernel. Why not? Linus has resisted these patches for a couple of reasons. One is that there are occasional uses for executable code on the stack; life gets a bit harder if you turn that off. But Linus's main point has always been that a non-executable stack is a band-aid solution which does not fix the real problem - poorly written applications. The real solution is to eliminate buffer overflows from user space code; these overflows can be exploited, after all, without an executable stack (though it is harder). See, for example, this note from Linus from back in August, 1998. The point Linus makes is valid. Meanwhile, however, the script kiddies are giving grief to a number of sites that could be prevented by this fix. In the end, security is not absolute, and every obstacle placed in the way can only help. But don't expect a non-executable stack from the mainstream kernel anytime soon; those interested in high security will need to look at the Solar Designer patches or a distribution like Immunix instead. Lessons from the quake cheat. Eric Raymond sent us an article about the "Quake cheat" - people modifying the (now open-source) Quake client to gain an advantage in the game. Eric's point is that, had Quake been developed as an open-source application since the beginning, these problems would not have arisen, since different design decisions would have been made. Worth a read. As another case to look at, consider Netrek, which has dealt with this problem for a long time. Netrek, in the end, has gone with a "blessed binaries" scheme; the code is in the open, but only specially built binaries (containing a proper cryptographic key) can be used with most servers. How SSH was freed. Daemonnews has put out a nice article describing the development of OpenSSH, titled "How SSH was freed". It gives some nice background on the developers that did the work and even includes some pictures. Of course, some people might disagree that the following constitutes "freeing" the code: "As detailed in the OpenSSH history page, much of the early work involved removing GPL'd or non-portable code." Security ReportsQuake Smurf. An exploit has been posted that allows a hacker to kick a player off a Quake server.glFtpdD vulnerabilities. Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in the glFtpdD FTP Daemon. A fix for the problem has been made available and will be included in the next release. Traffic shaper. Yuri Kuzmenko pointed out that the Linux traffic shaper allows non-root accounts to reset the speed of the shaper. Alan Cox acknowledged the problem and indicated that it has been fixed in the pre-patch series for the Linux 2.2.14 kernel (which should hopefully be released in the near future). msql cgi script. The w3-msql cgi script distributed with msql contains exploitable buffer overflows that can allow arbitrary code to be executed under the httpd uid, according to this advisory. An exploit for Solaris has been released. If you are not using the script, removal of it from your system is probably a good idea. No vendor comment or fix has been reported. ResourcesDenial of Service Tools. The latest CERT Advisory addresses new techniques for implementing Denial-of-Services attacks that are becoming more frequently used. This is not the type of problem that an easy patch or update will fix, so they can only provide suggestions, such as:
EventsRAID 2000. The Call-For-Papers for the Third International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID) has been released. Papers are due by March 30th, 2000 and the conference itself will be held October 2nd through the 4th in Toulouse, France.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
December 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel is 2.3.35. The patch is large - about 3.5 MB - and is dominated by the great Sparc tree merge. 64-bit Sparc might actually work with this release; 32-bit systems are going to have to wait longer. There is also the addition of "cramfs," a read-only, highly compressed filesystem which is meant for small ROM applications. Work continues on SCSI and USB drivers, the QNX filesystem is being updated again, a few organizational changes have happened, and the IRDA code has seen some work. There is, of course, no announcement. It has been pointed out that named pipes in 2.3.x are badly broken; watch out if you have an application that uses them. The current stable kernel is still 2.2.13. The good news is that Mark Lord has finally stomped the IDE bug, so that the way should now be clear for a 2.2.14 release. Really this time, honest... Meanwhile the prepatch series is up to 2.2.14pre17; barring problems, that should be the one that goes out. A few readers have pointed out that we keep neglecting to mention that the IBM S/390 patches are part of the 2.2.14 prepatch set. The port to the S/390 architecture was done by IBM and contributed to the kernel tree; IBM does not apparently intend to support this port as a commercial product. More information can be found on the IBM S/390 Linux page. A new object-based storage system. We got this note from Peter Braam about the release of an object-based storage system - the first step toward a new cluster filesystem. The ideas seem to be interesting; the object approach allows the creation of "smart drives" that can deal with objects directly. They have plans for all sorts of goodies that can be built using this approach; see the announcement for more. The code is being released under an open source license. Help out the Netfilter team. The Netfilter core team has issued a call for help with the production of the Netfilter test suite. Folks who are interested in getting into this code may want to have a look, and consider contributing some test programs - "even trivial tests help." High-performance web serving was a contentious topic for the week. It all started with a simple query as to why khttpd (Arjan van de Ven's kernel-based HTTP server) had ever been allowed into the mainstream kernel. Khttpd is seen by many as a classic example of kernel bloat - an unnecessary kernel implementation of a protocol that can be handled quite nicely in user space. At best, in this point of view, khttpd is an ill-advised concession to pressures to produce good benchmark results. So why did it go in? First of all, it is a small, straightforward module that does not really affect the rest of the kernel. Most people will leave it configured out, and never be bothered with it. Another reason is that is really does produce some impressive results - see this benchmark plot for an example. Serving only static files (the only thing khttpd does), khttpd does about four times better than Apache. It also beats the speedy Zeus server, though by a much smaller margin. Static files matter. Much web content is still static, and much dynamic content can be made static when performance needs dictate. For better or worse, HTTP is also increasingly being used as a file serving protocol, and performance matters in file serving. A good summary of what khttpd is trying to do was posted by Arjan as part of this discussion. User-space efforts to get the best performance for static files are also continuing. The most hope seems to be placed in "phhttpd," which is being developed by Zach Brown. Zach is working on a new release currently, and is looking for beta testers who have high-volume sites to try it out on. The jury is still out on which approach will produce the best results. There does appear to be a consensus that some more kernel support for asynchronous bulk data transfers is needed, no matter which approach is taken. That, of course, is a 2.5 issue at best. Meanwhile, those in search of extreme high performance in web serving have a few alternatives to choose from. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
December 30, 1999
For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. TINY Linux. TINY Linux is another mini-distribution with a specific target audience: people with older, slower computers. Although small, it is a full distribution, built to install off of multiple floppies, a necessity for many older machines. It already supports English, French, German and Spanish. "As long as your machine can bear it, you can run all available Linux applications on it." Please note that TINY is at the 0.01 development level, so it is not at all considered production quality yet. However, if you like it, they are likely to appreciate the feedback and any assistance they might receive. A bit more information can be found via the Freshmeat Appindex. Best LinuxBest Linux English Beta Information. Best Linux T-1, a beta version of the popular Finnish distribution with added support for English is now available as an ISO image as well as via free CDs.CalderaCaldera case studies wanted. A journalist has posted a call for OpenLinux users who would be willing to be interviewed for an article about the system.Debian GNU/LinuxDebian Weekly News. The Debian Weekly News is back, after a brief holiday hiatus. Choosing to model after us even more than just the name (yes, Joey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ...), they have put together their own Debian 1999 Timeline, tracking the most important stories of 1999 from the Debian perspective.The schedule for the freeze is currently set for January 2nd, 2000, and another bug-squashing party is being planned. On a different note, it has been confirmed that Quake will be packaged for Debian, now that its source is free, but note that Debian mirrors in some countries may face problems mirroring this package, and other similar "violent" games, that have been banned. On the GNU/HURD front, it seems one British company is now offering machines with GNU/HURD preinstalled ... Linux-MandrakeThe Linux-Mandrake demo and tutorial center. Linux-Mandrake has opened up its new Demo and Tutorial Center. It will be populated with lots of information on how to work with Linux-Mandrake; the initial entries include a tour of the KDE desktop and a look at the Mandrake update utility.LinuxPPCLinuxPower interviews LinuxPPC. LinuxPower did an interview with Jeff Carr and Jason Hass of LinuxPPC. "When the operation behind selling the discs became more taxing, Jeff incorporated the company and we started linuxppc.com. We're still trying to separate ourselves from .org. It's a slow and painful process of cell division, basically."muLinuxmuLinux V7r6. muLinux V7r6 (codename "Montalcino") has been announced. This is a single floppy distribution, useable as a rescue disk or for demonstrating Linux, and with add-ons available, such as X, ext support, gcc, etc.Slackware LinuxSlackware Weekly Report. From a quick peek at the Slackware Changelogs, it looks like the only activity this week was a minor patch to openvt and a Y2K fix to the sc package.SuSE LinuxSuSE-FAQ. Lenz Grimmer's SuSE-FAQ has been updated. It has an excellent SuSE timeline which talks about when SuSE originally shipped SLS, then Slackware and eventually developed its own distribution, based on Florian LaRoche's Jurix distribution (see right-hand column for related links).Yellow Dog LinuxA special edition of Yellow Dog Linux entitled "Tasty Morsels" has been announced. It includes Champion Server 1.1 and all errata updates.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
December 30, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsFreeGIS now available on CD. The FreeGIS project has released their first CD (also in German), proceeds of which will go back to this free software project. Contents of the CD will include programs familiar to many people in scientific institutions, such as GRASS (Geographic Resource Analysis Support System). Most of the tools included are licensed under the GPL or LGPL; exceptions are documented on the FreeGIS home page. Bulletin BoardsBoardzilla. The Boardzilla project has announced its existence. The purpose of this project is to create the world's greatest open source forum system. They are looking for ideas, wishlists, and, of course, developers. More information can be found on their web pages. A perl-based core for the new BBS system was initially released two weeks ago.Citadel/UX. For a more mature option, we received a note from Art Cancro, lead developer for Citadel/UX, a BBS system that has been around for over eleven years -- and is released under the GPL. It has some nice features, like the ability to access the BBS via a web interface. If these two projects haven't talked with each other before, perhaps they should. DatabasesIBM DB2 updates for Linux. IBM released a 105MB "Fixpak 2" for DB2 on Linux on December 7th. Anyone seriously using DB2 on Linux will probably want to take a look at this. Details can be found in the README or you can download the Fixpak directly. (Thanks to Philip Nelson.)DocumentationLinux Knowledge Base Weekly News. The second edition of the Linux Knowledge Base Weekly News has little to report this week, but promises more next week as developers get a chance to turn their "vacation" into progress for the project. For more information, check out the Linux Knowledge Base website.EducationCompil'Edux: Linux Applications for Education. Compil'Edux is a French site sponsored by the Groupe Guilde Education, which is working to "promote the use of Linux and Open Source software in French Education". [From LinuxForKids]Mail ServicesNew Postfix Snapshot. Postfix snapshot 19991227 has been released. Although the development nature of this release indicates that Wietse, at least, does not yet consider postfix to be ready for stable use, there are people who are already using it and apparently very happily. This update includes several fixes, primarily aimed at how mail from untrusted clients is handled.On the DesktopIcewm hits first stable release. The developers of icewm, a "fast, usable window manager", have released their version stable version, 1.0.0. This should indicate a product reliable enough for anyone to give it a try. For comments on "Why so many window managers?", check out the Slashdot commentary.GnomeAli Abdin has posted a followup to his Gnome Developer Interview, including responses from Owen Taylor and Tim Janik on GTK+ that didn't make it into the original interview and a clarification from Miguel on plotting with Gnumeric. In addition to discussing GTK, this followup covers Pango, a "modular set of libraries for doing layout and rendering of international text". This loooks extremely interesting and is certainly tackling a very hard problem. "I hope that Pango can become a standard, or at least commonly used library for handling these types of issues on open-source systems. There is a lot of activity now on enhancing internationalization support on Linux, often involving moving to using Unicode for representing text, but this has mostly centered on the "easy" languages ? things like Western European languages and East Asian languages. Not much attention has been paid yet to languages written right-to-left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, or the languages of South Asia, where rendering is a complex process without a one-to-one mapping between characters and glyphs. This is an area where commercial systems are currently considerably ahead of open-source systems; Pango is meant to close this gap." For icon-lovers, many, many new icons have been developed for Gnome, according to the latest Gnome icon report. KDEA KDE Application Development Tutorial has been created and made available by Antonio Larrosa (mirror site). This should help jumpstart anyone interested in developing applications for the K Desktop Environment. [From KDE News]Web DevelopmentThe Zope Weekly News. This week's Zope Weekly News mentions that Amos Lattier is starting to revisit FastCGI support and is therefore looking for bug reports. Also noted: the latest issue of Linux Magazine has a feature article that "talks about Digital Creations and Hadar Pedhazur at length."WineThe Wine Weekly News was not updated this week, presumably allowing the editors to better enjoy their holidays ...Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
December 30, 1999
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Development toolsPerlPerl is Y2K-compliant. If you need more detail than that, check out Tom Christiansen's latest essay on the topic. "The answer is that Perl is every bit as Y2K compliant as is your pencil; no more, and no less. Does that comfort you? It shouldn't. Just as you can commit Y2K transgressions with your pencil, so too you can do so with Perl -- or with any other tool, for that matter." It is a fun look at what he calls the Three Popular Lies of Y2K.PythonDr. Dobbs' Python-URL!. This week's Python-URL! announces three package updates/releases, including KOALA 0.9.0, a database / GUI forms package for postgres and Gnome. It also contains, of course, pointers to the most valuable of the discussions on the python mailing list over the past week.Tcl/tkTclTicker 1.2. Tom Poindexter has released TclTicker 1.2, a simple stock ticker program. The new release does automatic ticker symbol lookup and contains a few other new features.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessLinuxOne's IPO has been in the news this week, as a result of its amended S-1 filing. The filing has a number of interesting tidbits in it, including the fact that the project price has been increased (slightly) to $8.25/share. Unlike the previous filing, this one also lists an underwriter: Capital West Securities. Other tidbits from the filing:
Much of the press surrounding the LinuxOne IPO has been speculating that the stock could go public by the end of the year. We called up Capital West Securities to ask, and were told that the due diligence process is continuing and that the IPO is currently targeted for February. Reports that it is happening this year are incorrect. Capital West also seems to be somewhat surprised by the response the LinuxOne IPO is getting from the Linux community. They had as many questions for LWN as we had for them. While they wouldn't say that they were reconsidering this offering, there was enough talk of "continued due diligence" to give that impression. After all, to get caught up in a bad IPO would not do them any good either. (See also: Paul Rusty Russell's take on LinuxOne, and articles in News.com, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, Reuters, and NewsTrackers). The sourceXchange needs peer reviewers and spec writers. The sourceXchange has issued a call for peer reviewers and spec writers to help with their process. These are paid positions, and could well be a good way to pick up a little cash while helping the free software process. Folks interested in the Itanium processor may want to check out this paper on porting kernels to the IA-64 architecture in the Intel Technology Journal. It gives some good coverage of the difficulties that an Intel porting encountered. (Thanks to Steven Rosenblum). The beta version of the long-awaited Opera browser is available for download; it can be found on Metalab. A quick test shows it to be quick, but buggy - not quite ready for prime time yet. (Thanks to Manfred Scheible). Section Editor: Jon Corbet. Press Releases:
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
December 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended Reading: The New York Times ran this article about the most interesting "cyberlaw" developments of 1999. It is less Microsoft-dominated than one might expect, and worth a read. "The attention Wall Street has been giving to Linux all year is ironic... but it demonstrates that the software business will never be the same again, now that everyone has admitted that the best software things in life are free. The licensing structure of the general public license, which frees everyone to create knowing that everyone can use everyone else's improvements, is the legal structure of software's future." The New York Times is a registration-required site. (Thanks to Paul Hewitt). Here is a Salon article on the Linux stock market frenzy. The author concludes that it is actually a good thing. "If, in the long run, Red Hat and VA Linux never earn a dime, and stockholders start pulling their hair out and analysts begin announcing downgrades, the world in general still stands to benefit immensely. That's because, right now, companies like Red Hat and VA Linux are substantially increasing the amount of software that belongs to the whole world. Software that solves problems, leverages creativity and intelligence, and, bottom line, is free. The companies may go away, but the software won't. What we are currently seeing, in essence, is the largest-scale bilking of the 'free market' ever perpetrated, for the purpose of creating a common infrastructure of software tools that will be to the lasting benefit of all humanity. Merry Christmas, everyone." Y2K: LinuxTicker has run an article (in German) covering the Y2K readiness of each Linux distribution, and going over a set of problem applications. It's a good overview of where things stand, worth a last-minute look. English text can be attempted via Babelfish, but it appears to be misbehaving again. Internet Week ran this article with predictions for next year. "...Linux is likely to be limited to its current role of Web-serving, and file- and print-sharing in the enterprise for 2000, said analyst Greg Weiss of D.H. Brown Associates." Software Patents: The U.S. Patent office will be revisiting the "Windowing" patent, according to this News.com story. Windowing is an obvious Y2K fix; it was covered in this LWN feature in November. "The Dickens windowing patent was issued in 1998. Analysts have discovered information on the fix from IBM, which referred to the technique in pamphlets as far back as 1991." This osOpinion piece supports the Amazon.com boycott. "The free software movement is filled with software that probably violates a host of obvious patents... In fact my understanding of amazon is that they use free software for their business - software that could be infringing on any one of the legions of obvious software patents!" Business: Here's an article in CNN looking at support offerings for Linux. "One big reason that companies have moved from playing around with open source programs, such as Linux, to using them in production networks is that a greatly improved service and support network has emerged." ZDNet looks at Microsoft and Linux. "The company still is vacillating between two opposite poles. One, that Linux is not a real competitor- as Microsoft claims on its Linux myths Web page; and two, that Linux is poised to do real damage to Microsoft-as its Department of Justice defenders claim every chance they get." The Montreal Gazette looks at Corel's latest disappointment. "'This setback in the Windows market will encourage us even further to push hard into the enormous potential of Linux,' chief executive Michael Cowpland said in a conference call. Corel is the company with the most Linux technology, he added, noting that the stock market values his company at less than 5 per cent as much as Linux-sector leader Red Hat." Finally: Upside looks at the Mozilla M12 release. "When finally released, Mozilla is expected to be both faster and more stable than Internet Explorer. Such is almost guaranteed, since any programmer in the world will be able to fix bugs that surface." CBS Marketwatch has put up its list of the top ten financial stories of 1999. Linux is number six. "When it burst onto the scene a couple years ago as a rebellion against Windows and other established operating systems for computers, the Linux 'open-source' movement of code-sharing probably seemed a bit obscure to most investors" Here's an installation nightmare story in the Washington Post. "My objective was to see whether a Windows user could switch to Linux with minimum heartache and hassle. The answer is no. If Red Hat wants converts, the Linux switch must be as easy and painless as possible." (Thanks to David Hartley). Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
December 30, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesSlides from talks given at the December 2nd Open Source Licensing Workshop have been made available, including talks by Eric Raymond, Karsten Self and Michael Krieger (Attorney at Law, UCLA Computer Science Department).EventsLinuxFest 2000 has been scheduled for June 20-24, 2000 in Kansas City. A few details can be found in the announcement. |
December 30, 1999
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekDotComma is a slashdot-like site aimed at providing programming information to programmers. It is relatively new, and seems to mostly interested in PHP at this time. Linux Commentary is a site put together by Neil Brown; it contains a set of documentation on how parts of the kernel work. Covered thus far are the virtual file system (VFS) and the NFS server; pointers exist to some related documentation elsewhere. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
December 30, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
Date: 23 Dec 1999 From: toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Elements of Programming Style On the front page of todays Linux Weakly News, you wrote: > Those of you lucky enough to have Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of > Programming Style can imagine that Eric's book will be something similar, > but presumably (hopefully) without the Fortran code. I...must....not.... Awww - nuts I fail to see what's wrong with K&P using Fortran for their *examples*. It only shows that people who can really think - as opposed to those who can only code - can write clean programs in any language. I wouldn't be surprised if even COBOL programs from their hands would be easily understandable. Cheers, Toon Moene (mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl) Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286 GNU Fortran: http://egcs.cygnus.com/onlinedocs/g77_news.html | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 12:58:20 -0500 (EST) From: William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com> To: Gracian Mack <gracian@redherring.com>, edit@redherring.com Subject: LinuxOne IPO - concerns Good afternoon, Gracian, I found your article about LinuxOne (*1) on Red Herring today. While it covered the financial aspect of the IPO quite well, it didn't seem to cover the concerns that the Linux community has raised about the company itself. I honestly can understand why you might decide to stick to numerical facts. However, would you at least consider looking at some of the concerns that have been raised? In a nutshell, LinuxOne has released a very small number of products. They appear to be almost entirely straight copies of the code released by RedHat Linux and Mandrake Linux. I did a comparison one afternoon of the LinuxOne Linux distribution and RedHat and Mandrake Linux; all but one of the packages making up that distribution were exact copies from RedHat or Mandrake; the sole changed package was the initial web page presented in the web browser which had become a mini-prospectus for LinuxOne. This tends not to support the claim that they provide additional value. Others have covered the additional concerns of the Linux community better than I can; please take a look at the following links to read more: http://www.samba.org/netfilter/linuxonescam.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1505138.html http://technocrat.net/941620583/index_html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-806525.html http://linuxtoday.com/stories/14322.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/991102-000009.html http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11/lw-11-linuxone.html I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the debate. Cheers, - Bill *1 http://www.herring.com/insider/1999/1228/inv-ipoweek.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction--from which, by induction, it is evident that every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work. (Courtesy of Weather-Man(a/k/a wormied dude, <worm@Thirdwave.NET>) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- William Stearns (wstearns@pobox.com). Mason, Buildkernel, named2hosts, and ipfwadm2ipchains are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 15:26:30 -0500 (EST) From: Seth Vidal <skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: free code? free art? Below is the text of the message I sent to elliot rusty regarding his journal entry posted to lwn on dec 28th. URL:http://www.macfaq.com/journal/freedocumentation.html thanks -sv ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 15:16:46 -0500 (EST) From: Seth Vidal <skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu> To: elharo@metalab.unc.edu Subject: free code? free art? Hi, I read your journal entry regarding free documentation. I would like to note that it was well written but I would disagree with certain points of what you are saying. While much free software can be forked and separated from the original branch - and then distributed under another name or the same name (excluding trademark infringements) - a great deal of free software is people re-integrating ideas into an original tree - or making suggestions to sections etc. ie: if I we're to pick up one of your books and I had suggestions for improvments or grammatical problems or more verbose examples etc etc - I would submit them to you. You could choose to include them or ignore them - your option. I would make my changes available on the web for people who wanted them but not for all. Its like kernel development - if Linus thinks it sucks - then it sucks - and it won't get far. If he likes it he puts it in. The author's "voice" could most closely resemble tabbing and code organization in source code. Linus and others HATE bad formatting in the source - they either fix it when they come upon it or they send it back for fixing to the original author. either way formatting is maintained throughout the kernel. I agree with your points regarding Kai's power GOO - but would it not be better for him to open the source and allow user interface options to develop? - If he is really for non-standard - imaginative and innovative designs then he'll want to open it to all. The crux of this rambling email is that while you're correct that the voice is important, it is not true that the author loses ALL control over the format once the document is open sourced. It just means that others can help - and will need coaxing and convincing to alternative ideas. The reason so many open source projects work is b/c they have a very few people in charge who have a vision of what it should look like. They are willing to change their minds and visions - but they are also willing to be sticklers about certain features: You could be a stickler about the number or kind of jokes to make about microsoft or sun - but be willing to be bend on the type of and scope of the examples. It really can be great to have a collaborative effort. Thanks. -sv Seth Vidal skvidal@nospam-phy.duke.edu | ||
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 14:12:25 +0530 From: Anand Srivastava <anand@aplion.stpn.soft.net> To: info@lawnewsnetwork.com, letters@lwn.net Subject: Has anybody patented Law yet. Hi, I guess its about time somebody should patent laws. Many laws are being used by governments over the world. I think US Govt would be willing to pay substantially for a law that they want to frame (rather they have to frame, because of various reasons). Here is another gold mine. Seriously, you would think that this is stupid. Likewise to us software people, single click order, is stupid. And a whole lot of similar patents, like the windowing patent. -anand | ||